Sony Playstation Portable

news link

http://www.gamerfeed.com/index.php?story=3128

Sounds awesome. Nintendo needs a good kick in the bum.

Yup I agree. Competition is always a good thing

Well this thing SLAUTERS the Nintendo gameTOY. Wireless and 1.8 gig large games! Gee wiz, time to sell the gameboy

Well by that logic I should have sold everything to get an XBox by now.

It all comes down to games.

Let's hope it won't cost over $150

I really don't think Sony disapoints in that department as they have the WORST hardware on the market but are on top, so you are right, it is all about the games.

They also had a huge head start on this generation of systems so yes, they have more games, but only a handful of great ones.

This definitely looks like a promising system, but I'm not going to run out and buy it just because of specs.

The PS1 came out YEARS after Nintendo and Sega yet still nabbed the market.

I would have to say that PS2 has as many great games as the GameCube.

Ah, this looks REALLY cool! Can't wait to hear more about it! Whenever there are pics or more details please post links. Thanks!

, how much is this thing gonna cost?

Exactly, and Sony with the playstation name is the perfect one to do it, Wireless support? Hell yeah!

-Owl

HAHAH!!! Whew, I needed a good laugh today.

Huh? GameCube cost $150 so PSP would be pretty worthless if it's over that price

I think he was laughing cuz it would be rather stupid for Sony to charge more then that.

imo, battery life is a big thing.

haha... launch date is fourth quarter 2004

Sony PSP Press Release

That's pretty far away! Seem like they want to overhype it again.

Yet Nintendo's next gameboy will probibly take another 10 years.

Not exactly... The PlayStation come out 1 year before the Nintendo 64 (in the US), which was crippled from the start by its cartridge format. The Sega Saturn came out 4 months before the PS1, but its launch was completely botched, it was overpriced, and Sega really didn't understand that the era of 3D console games had arrived. Sony did well with the PlayStation 1, but the mistakes their competitors made really set the table for them.

Fast forward to PS2, which had a one year head start on the cube and xbox, as well as the momentum of the hugely popular PS1. I'm not going to rag on PS2, it had an excellent collection of games during the 2001 xmas season, but since 2001 the PS2 has really been treading water IMO. Even xbox has had more interesting games in the past 1.5 years. None of this matters, of course, because PS2 already had such a huge lead by the end of 2001 that xbox and gamecube never had a chance to come close.

The Sony portable sounds interesting. Still in question are important issues like price, battery life, and games. I don't question that Sony can make a cool device, but I wonder if Sony can make fun portable games. Portables are already a low profit market for 3rd parties, but making portable cartridge games is also pretty cheap. With a lot more storage and hardware to play with, games will be more complicated and more expensive to make. So I wonder how many 3rd parties will just jump on... OTOH, everything Sony touches in the gaming industry turns to gold nowadays. It'll be nice to have some competition at least, portable gaming will only improve.

How much do you want to bet that Sony will take the same approach as Nintendo and re-release a lot of the PS1 games for this system? I wouldnt mind that one bit...

Sounds awesome, especially all of the specs. But how much? Battery life? And how well will it really do -- Nintendo's GBA(SP) is the PS2 of the handheld world. And there are tons of games. Alwyas a good boost for competition, though.

.

Is a disk-based portable really a good idea?

Deppends on how portable it is... discs skip LOTS, unless that thing has a good chunk of something to buffer all that data you're looking at a really dumb setup. Besides Nintendo will STILL have the lead, and I bet they've already got a disc setup that can work on a portable at nintendo. All they'd need to do is stick a USB or Firewire port on their portable, and have a lil thing that could read and save GBA and GBC and GB games to it stick sme inteneral flash media in the next gen game boy and nintendo has a solution to keep their old games and bam they're good to go.

Nintendo hopefully will always dominate the portable game industry. I really don't wanna see Sony head in that dept look what they did with the console, yes nintendo dropped the ball with the N64, but look at Sony's games, all low quality designed for the lowest common denominator. Sooooo much of the stuff on the PS is soo freaking low quality... not graphics or sound wise neccicarly but just... it's all soo low brow!

Besides Nintendo does still know how to accomidate younger gammers which largely the portable market is.

You should get on the phone right now with Sony and tell them that. I am sure they have no idea that disks can skip and that the need to buffer it. All that experiance with Diskmans for the past 20 years have taught them nothing.

Yeah, that and the fact that minidisks hardly ever skip... And the format they're using on this portable sounds like an upgraded minidisk.

...and that games load data and then use it from memory, and don't often actually make calls to the disc (depending on the game). In other words, it doesn't need to buffer like an aduio CD does.

Sure it sounds cool, but if it costs more than $100 there is no way it will out sell the Gameboy.

But with a larger, widescreen display and 1.8 GB of storage for games (which will mean much more graphically detailed and larger games) I'm sure it will for $199 or so.

Actually I think it won't sell that well with that many features if they can't price it at or bellow 150.. I mean the main market for portables is younger kids... I don't know of that many older people who would wanna take their system with them... maybe I'm wrong but I don't think so.

Why do you say that? The only handheld on market is the GameBoy and ya the kids love those cheese kids game but I think sony can find a new market. Wasn't this years E3 18+?

True, but how who buys them for the younger kids? Parents and relatives, mostly as holiday gifts.

I'd buy it for $199 if it is truelly revolutionary. I'd rather pay less though.

Yeah but generally at least from the people around me, once you get out of grade 10 video games arn't terribly important, they're more of a hang out with your friends and play or play now and then type thing. Where as with younger kids there is generally more of a dedication. I realize there are many games aimed at an older audence, but even still a lot of those are picked up by younger buyers. And most people at least by the time they hit college have something to DO when they go out, or at least they'll find something, and really don't want to bring their console with them. I dono maybe we've got people here who want that, but I really would be surprised if there is a reasonable market outside of the younger ages for this sort of thing.

Some people really don't appreciate the artistic value of video games at all -- they're not purely "kids' toys." That's sad.

Whooo! Awesome sig.

LOL, yeah, like you're having tea and crumpets with the frickin' queen every day.

My mom had a health Tetris addiction for a while

Seriously though, there is a huge market for games and 'older' people over 12, I see people older than me with a new gameboy all time time.

I dono maybe Canada's just behind America's ficsation with spending time on video games. Don't get me wrong I've spent many a week renting Chrono trigger and going through new game plus 50 times (of course that's an exaduration) and I've probably beaten FF3 at least 5 times. And I can waste all my friends at Smash Bros... I just don't think that the older market has that much time to spend on things of that little importance. I dono maybe I just grew out of video games but there are things in life that matter more than sweet graphics a good battle system and strong story line... and whatever the heck is in grand theift auto now.

Anyway call me crazy but I don't think there is that large of a 16+ market for portables... unless they intigrate a cell phone.

If you could get four-play Smash Bros in portable form, I, and a lot of my friends, would definitely buy one. And I don't even play video games that much.

YOU ARE A GENIUS.

I know a lot of people my age who still actively play video games. I think this system could do very well.

Huh? Personally I have: Nintendo, Super Nintendo, N64, GameCube, Original Gameboy, Gameboy Advance SP, VirtualBoy, Playstation 2 and an Xbox.

So for me I would have to say I am just as big of a "ficsation."

**************** NEW - July ***************

Time to bring this thread back from the dead.


Specs for the new Sony PSP (link courtesy of /.)

http://www.zdnet.co.jp/games/gsnews/0307/29/news08.html

With those specs I'd be surprised if it was under $300.

Awesome specs -- price will definitely be a factor. And PS2 type graphics? Hell the PS2 itself didn't have PS2-promised graphics. Sounds cool, but how big, and how much, and will developers care (most likely; it's all about money, baby)?

Hey MindFad -- just realized you were the one who made the cool Nintendo icons. Good work.

Haha. Thanks.

By the way, it says the thing has 2MB of VRAM? That's not right, is it? That's gonna be fun to develop for if that's the case. Wow, it might be able to handle two high-res models and a few crappy textures with that? The wireless sounds really awesome, though. If anything, this will push Nintendo (hopefully) to up the competition, and they already own this market. I mean, PWN this market.

Bet this thing premiers right along side a new nintendo creation. Hopefully not limited to cartriges. They'd do better to just have a external cartrige reader and an internal optical disc reader.

Hopefully nintendo will kick Sony's butt in this market